Federal Debt Per Second
The clock doesn't stop on weekends. Or recessions. Or speeches about fiscal responsibility.
The US federal debt grows continuously, derived from the annual budget deficit. At approximately $1.7 trillion in annual deficit spending, the per-second accrual rate works out to roughly $53,000 — every second, all day, every day. This indicator uses FRED's GFDEBTN series (Total Public Debt Outstanding, in millions) and computes the annualized growth rate to estimate the per-second figure. The number updates as new FRED data is released, which is quarterly.
Annual deficit estimated from FRED GFDEBTN series (Total Public Debt Outstanding), measuring the change over 4 trailing quarterly observations (~1 year). Annualized change converted from millions of dollars to dollars, then divided by 31,557,600 (seconds per year). Falls back to the static value of $53,000 when API data is unavailable or API key is not configured.